“Many hearing of the Armenian genocide and efforts to
raise this issue today wonder why we care so much about something that happened
so long ago? There are two ways to explain this.

First, the magnitude of the genocide itself: it was a case
of severe government repression against a minority that was significant not
just for Armenians and Turks living in that particular region at that time, but
for many others in other regions and later years. The fact that the genocide
was largely unpunished and its consequences remained unaddressed make it a
living cause today, even with all the other problems we all have to deal with.

The Armenian genocide is an extreme case of what the
relatively powerful can do to the relatively powerless, what a paranoid leadership
can do to its citizens. By the time of the genocide, Armenians had been
stateless for over 500 years, while some individual Armenian families as well
as the Church won favor with the Ottoman Sultan, on the whole the status of
Armenians and other minorities were of an abused lower caste.

Like emancipation movements before and after it,
activists for the rights of the Armenians turned to self-organization and to
external powers to address their grievances. Those powers, principally the
Western Europeans and the Russians occasionally turned their gaze to the Turkish Armenian matter, but most of their involvement remained on the margins and when
pledges were made they remained mostly unfulfilled.

Case in point, in May 1915, as the Young Turks’ “crime
against humanity and civilization” – as the Armenian genocide was referred to
at the time – got underway, Britain,France and Russia pledged that “they
will hold personally responsible [for] these crimes all members of the Ottoman
government and those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres.” Subsequently, the Russian military helped evacuate more than 100,000 people from Van area and French
worships picked up thousands more Armenians surrounded on a mountain on the
Mediterranean (something replayed with ISIS and Iraqi Yezidis on Mt. Sinjar
recently). But as was the case with the Holocaust during WWII there was no
concerted effort to stop the genocide; for each country priorities of war were
elsewhere.

By the time the Turks were defeated, the Russian emperor
was overthrown, but the British and the French were there to occupy the Ottoman
capital. Before they did a German u-boat spirited the three main criminals–
Talaat, Djemal and Enver, the leaders of the Young Turks – to then
German-occupied Crimea. The British did arrest a few dozen others held
responsible for the massacres but ended up exchanging them for British POWs
held by Ataturk, who fought to expel the allies – along with most of the remaining
Armenians - from Asia Minor.

As a result, the Armenians took it upon themselves to
hunt down the three main Young Turks and some other key Ottoman officials. All
were killed between 1921 and 1922. The criminals who remained in Turkey were
protected by Ataturk. Having signed peace treaties with the West and now Soviet
Russia, the Turkish government hoped to put a lid on the Armenian matter for
good, and for a while they succeeded.

More than a million people were dead, more than half a
million survivors expelled from their homeland; their properties confiscated.
With some one-third of all Armenians dead and most of the survivors living in
poverty and under Soviet political diktat, the Armenians were silenced.

The 50th anniversary of the genocide – marked
in 1965 - became a turning point. Even though there was no real common agenda
between Diaspora and Soviet Armenia, beyond making sure the issue is not
forgotten, in the last 50 years, the Armenian genocide became a political issue
again rising to the occasional attention of presidents and national
parliaments.

Vociferous denials by Turkish governments only made this
recognition campaign more potent. The official Turkish rhetoric began to change in recent years. In
April of last year, for the first time ever, a Turkish leader offered condolences
to Armenians, while of course stopping short of any apology.

Coming
together for the centennial

Now on this 100th anniversary, we are
wondering what comes next? Will it be more of the same, are Armenians losing
steam on this issue or will there be some kind of a transformation of this
issue? There have been calls for a greater emphasis on legal efforts to win
property restitution, and forget about recognition campaigns – as the genocide
has already been recognized. But by their nature legal challenges are drawn
out, exhausting exercises that are not a substitute for political activism.

What happened this last April 24 was a real pan-national
event. Probably no other single event had focused the minds of so many
Armenians and others on Armenians, perhaps not even the genocide itself. At
commemorative events turnouts were very strong, there were of course huge
crowds in Armenia, some 160,000 marched in Los Angeles (never before have
so many Armenians come out together in LA – or perhaps anywhere else in
Diaspora - on any known occasion), many thousands in Moscow, Paris, Istanbul,
Tehran; small but remarkable commemorations took place in the besieged Aleppo and
Qamishli in Syria and throughout Iraq: Baghdad, Basra, Erbil – basically places
where ISIS hasn’t reached. And really everywhere around the world where there
are Armenian communities. Many Armenians from the Diaspora went to either Armenia or Turkey to participate in commemorations there.

In the run up to the centennial and in the days since,
many world figures spoke out on the genocide: Pope Francis, Putin, Obama,
reports of resolutions and other official statements came from the European
Parliament, Germany, Austria, Bulgaria (notably all three countries were WWI allies of the Turks),
Ukraine, Chile and Ecuador, and Iraqi Kurdistan is reportedly deliberating.
Remarkably, German president noted his country’s complicity in the genocide.
Predictably, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other Turkish officials lashed out and
even recalled a couple of ambassadors. But in another important progression of
rhetoric, prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu called the Armenian deportations “a
crime against humanity.”

All of this of course created what the Turkish officials
anticipated would be a “tsunami” of media coverage of things Armenian, probably
more Armenian coverage than at any point since the 1988 earthquake. And of
course this is how it is for most small attention-starved countries, the only times
they get a lot of attention is when something goes horribly wrong – as did this
week in Nepal, for example. But in this case, the horrors were sufficiently far in
the past to make the day about Armenian survival and togetherness.

It was also
a great distraction from the many things that have been going in a wrong
direction for the Armenians.

The spillover of the economic crises into Armenia; the
many ineptitudes of the Armenian government; the direction of Putin’s Russia
and how it impacts Armenia and all of the former Soviet Union, such as the
pressure to curtail ties with the West and crack down on “Western agents”; the
horrific, unprecedented murder of a family in the city of Gyumri a few months
ago; the devastation of Armenian diaspora communities in Syria and Iraq and to
some extent in eastern Ukraine. Last, but far from least, the escalating “slow”
war on the border with Azerbaijan.

Incidentally, that border had been remarkably quiet in the
run-up to the genocide centennial. For whatever reason, Ilham Aliyev decided to
take a breather after an unprecedented tempo of attacks in months prior.
Perhaps, Aliyev didn’t want those attacks caught up in the stream of
international coverage. Perhaps, he is expecting a return favor during the
upcoming European Olympics in Baku in June. We have yet to see.

Turkey
and Armenia: worrying trends

Returning to the topic of contemporary Turkish government
policies, much can be said about the generally improving rhetoric of the
Turkish officials, the greater acceptance of Armenians inside Turkey, the
restoration of churches and returns of the few of the multitude of confiscated community
properties. All of this is no doubt significant. But the most important test of
Turkey’s attitude is its approach towards Armenia and here worrying trends
abound.

First, there is no sign that Turkey seeks normal
relations with Armenia and many indications it is using its outreach to Armenia
and Diaspora to neutralize the embarrassing genocide recognition campaigns. The
protocols – signed in 2009 and never implemented – were a prime example, and
inviting the Armenian president to Gallipoli events intentionally scheduled on
April 24, the most recent one. All in all, Turkey’s policy towards Armenia is
the main cause of Armenia’s dependence on Russia for security, and by extension
for Russia’s grip on the whole of South Caucasus.

But none of that justifies Armenia’s own passivity in
terms of finding new ways of directly engaging with the Turkish political class
and society, even without an embassy in Ankara. Turkey is a remarkable country,
as far as Armenians are concerned, with all the legacies of the genocide, today’s
Turkey probably has the largest proportion of Armenophiles anywhere in the
world.

Second worrying trend is that Turkey has stepped up its military cooperation with Azerbaijan. Since last year their ground and air
forces have conducted more joint exercises than ever before. Behind Russia and
Israel, Turkey is the third largest supplier of weaponry to Azerbaijan. Last
November, commander of Turkish special forces went to Azerbaijan and that trip
was followed by a very discernible change in Azerbaijani tactics on the Line of
Contact with Armenia. Some Armenian military officials even claim that Turkish
personnel may be directly participating in some of the operations; no evidence of that has surfaced, but there are these suspicions.

And third, while Erdogan’s rise to power and his
confrontation with the old elite has made the current level of discussion of Armenian
issues inside Turkey possible, Erdogan’s consolidation of power and increased
authoritarianism have begun and will continue to stymie all debate, including
on sensitive matters such as the Armenian. The sudden “retirement” of
Davutoglu’s adviser Etyen Mahcupyan, just days before April 24 and days after
he publicly referred to the genocide, was notable.

The upcoming election in Turkey can give Erdogan the sort
of majority in parliament that would open the way for a switchover to a presidential system. This would risk "putinization" of Turkey that can produce
problematic outcomes both inside and beyond Turkey, including for Armenia.